I’m currently studying naming practices in 7 countries on a Watson Fellowship. I’m curious how names are defined both by the individuals who bear them and their cultural and historical contexts. The process of naming a child is shaped by considerations that include religious traditions, government restrictions, family history, and cultural icons. I'm interested in how names act as microcosms for societal questions of identity on an international scale.

Tuesday, July 3, 2012

Name Post: The Secret of the Sun

A Saturday afternoon spent picking lupines and waiting for the bus.

One of the
highlights of my time in Iceland so far has been making the acquaintance of a
Watson Fellow who was in the class of 1981. Sarah is a poet and translator who
has lived in Iceland since meeting and marrying an Icelandic man while on her
Watson year (no plans to follow in her footsteps…yet). She kindly e-mailed me
in March 2011 to congratulate me on the Watson and told me to look her up when
I got here. Last weekend I got to be the
beneficiary of a traditional Icelandic meal at her house in Hafnarfjarðar because, as she told me, Watson alums pretty unanimously agree that “you should always feed a Watson.”

I feel very
lucky to have been temporarily included into her family circle for many reasons,
but one of these was the opportunity to meet her 27 year-old daughter, Solrun (actually spelled Solrún),
who has grown up going back and forth between Iceland and the states. (She also
has two really adorable Icelandic children I got to hang out with). Solrun has
had a variety of names in her transcontinental existence; going from Solrun in
Iceland to Sola while at college in the states, with various nicknames
and Facebook identities thrown in for good measure.

Sarah told me
that Solrun was born in the summer and it's customary for parents in Iceland with children born around the solstice to use “sol” (meaning “sun”) somewhere
in their names. Like many names here,
the name “Solrun” is really a compound word; “sol” meaning “sun”, and “run”
meaning “rune” or “secret.”

Laugavegur, downtown Reykjavik

Growing up in
the U.S., Solrun took her name quite literally. She told me that as a child she
spent some afternoons trying to figure out just what this secret of the sun
was, a secret she assumed she was supposed to know because she wore this
name.She told me that she was convinced
she figured it out one summer day when she squinted at the sun and saw rainbows
behind her eyelids. She eagerly told this to her aunt, who promptly informed her that this happened to everyone who squinted at the
sun.

Solrun and I
talked about a lot of other things, including her own children’s
Icelandic/American names, which I’ll write about another time, but this story
stuck with me—the image of her as a child trying to figure out the secret. It
made me wonder if she had grown up in Iceland, if she would have had the same
impulse to invest in the literal meaning of her name.

I think that in
places where “noun names” (the title I’m giving to names that are literal
translations of words), are more common, they might actually be taken less
literally. Byrndis, the twenty-three year-old daughter of my landlady who has
become a friend, told me the other day about her friend, Hrefna. Hrefna is
apparently an old traditional Norse name, but it is also one of a few Icelandic
words for “whale.” My mind immediately went to this poor girl trying to get
through her teenage years, but Bryndis reassured me she took it in stride. “Now
she just likes to tell tourists in bars here that her name means ‘whale’, and
they never believe her.”

Reykjavik Harbour

In a way, the
relationship between names and nouns in Iceland reminds me of many traditional
names in Zambia, where the meaning of names isn’t meant to reflect on the
child, but more on the circumstances of birth. Even though names that follow Zambian traditions have a literal
meaning (“Mabvuto” meaning “problems”, or “Tikwambenji”, “What is there to
say?”), they aren’t supposed to be a
direct representation of the child--an idea that's in opposition
to many people’s perceptions of names in the United States, where names
represent the person who wears them, first and foremost.

Bryndis
explained to me that her own name is from “bryn” (“armour”) combined with “dis”
(“fairy”); in other words, her name conjures the image of an “armored fairy.” I asked her if most Icelandic people would
hear her name and picture this, and she said she wasn’t sure, but because they
speak the language, if they thought about it, they could figure out its meaning.Because the Icelandic language has changed so
little over time, names can often be
deciphered from the root of their words.In my mind, it’s the difference between a name like “Rose” or “Destiny”
in the U.S., where the meaning is obvious, and a name like Daniel (which
literally means “he who walks with God”), where the meaning can’t be deciphered
from the word alone.

Iceland has names
where the meanings are less obvious as well, and mostly, these are biblical
names like Jon and Adam, rather than names that come from Norse gods and
goddesses.But many names here are
directly formed as compound words, which means that learning
names here is actually quite a good way to learn a bit of Icelandic. Guðrún,
one of the most popular girl’s names, means “God” + “rune”, Steingerður
means “Stone” + “garden”, Droplaug means “drop” + “pool.”

I’ve found "compound word" names like these in many of the countries I’ve visited this
year. They vaguely remind me of some of the descriptive names of First Americans. They're also reminiscent of Amazigh names in Morocco (names that are often banned
because they pre-date Islam and are not thought of as exemplifying a “Moroccan
identity.”) Many of them have similar meanings, often based in naturalism (Ayyur
meaning “moon” in Tamazight, for example, or “Sifaw” meaning
“enlightened".)The fact that many of these compound word, "noun names" have Pagan roots has led quickly to their replacement in some places.

Grey day.

What I’m wondering about now, however,is how the meaning behind names may change when some names have more
literal meanings than others.In a place where your name is a direct translation of “whale” or “sun’s secret”, how do you interpret these words in relationship to yourself? Do you actually take the meaning of your name less
to a heart than you would in a place where names' meanings are more illusive and
unknown? It might mean that Rose in the U.S. takes her name more literally
than “stone’s garden” in Iceland or “problems” in Zambia, even though all of these names have specific and obvious definitions in their various contexts.

I believe that the literal definitions of names is only a small fraction of what they represent worldwide, but I'm also realizing that the weight we give to these definitions may vary cross-culturally.

And, of course, it also varies by person. The other day I was walking
through some Reykjiavak suburbs trying to find the mall where Bryndis works to
met her for lunch. I got lost and ended up asking a guy on a skateboard for
help. He ended up walking me there and, in a moment of Watson-year serendipity, he turned out to be a local celebrity.I told him I was studying Icelandic names and
he told me I’d see his name in the Guinness book of World Records for balancing
on his skateboard for the longest amount of time. (I looked this up later and found that this
is a true story, not an oddly-specific pick up line: http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/records-5000/longest-skateboard-stationary-manual/).
His name is Hlynur, which means, “maple.”

As it turns out, in Iceland, most skateboards are made from the wood of maple trees. "It was meant to be," he told me.

Maybe it’s a
question of destiny, or maybe it’s more of a question of psychology, of wanting
to, to use a cliché, “live up to our names.”It might be an unavoidable and universal impulse to take names at least a little
bit personally, whether that means trying to escape the “mabvutos” that surround our births, living up to our namesakes, or taking it on as a personal
responsibility to figure out the secret of the sun.

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About Me

I graduated from Swarthmore College in 2011 as an English Literature/Theater Major. From July 2011 to July 2012 I'll be traveling to seven different countries on a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship to study naming practices around the world (www.watsonfellowship.org). You can reach me at nell.a.bangjensen@gmail.com.